The Church as a Community of Conscience
Part 1 in a Series on Catholics, Conscience, and Immigration Enforcement
Melanie Krause, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), two weeks ago announced her intention to resign from the position as a protest against an agreement made between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security in which the former agreed to share taxpayer data with the latter for purposes of immigration enforcement (the agreement was signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, rather than Krause, signed the agreement on behalf of the IRS). By statute, the IRS is prohibited from sharing taxpayer information with other government agencies, except in rare situations, and the IRS has never previously been involved with immigration enforcement efforts.
Krause is not the only senior official to have resigned from the Trump administration less than a hundred days into Donald Trump’s presidency. For example, in February, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, stepped down over concerns that the personal information of Social Security recipients was being accessed by staff from the recently created Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk. And just this week, three prosecutors at the Southern District of New York US Attorney’s Office resigned in the wake of that office’s February decision to refuse to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams after being ordered to do so by the Justice Department. The US Attorney for the district, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in February, arguing that the Justice Department was seeking to drop the case for political motives rather than based on the merits, as did five other prosecutors.
In these and similar cases, executive branch officials have appealed to their own consciences, refusing to participate in actions they consider unethical or illegal. I began with Krause’s case, however. because I believe immigration enforcement is one of the areas of administration policy where questions of conscience are most acute and where they should be most widespread. Back in November, I raised the question of whether Catholic Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers should ever conscientiously object to carrying out unethical or illegal orders as part of a mass deportation effort. At the time, I noted that making the case for conscientious objection would require careful reasoning because, presumably, participating in the arresting, detaining, or deporting of people unlawfully present in the United States is not, in principle, unethical.
Since then, however, we’ve become aware of the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant mistakenly deported to a harsh “megaprison” in El Salvador without due process, as well as the Trump administration’s refusal to facilitate his return to the US, in defiance of an order from the US Supreme Court. The judge in Abrego’s case, Paula Xinis, has said that the administration and the Justice Department attorneys representing it in court are not acting in good faith. We’ve also witnessed the deportation of several dozen Venezuelans to the same Salvadoran prison, based on flimsy evidence of gang affiliation, in defiance of a court order halting the deportations until the migrants were given a chance to challenge their deportation in court. Many of these Venezuelans were deported under the Alien Enemies Act, based on the spurious argument that they are foreign invaders. Last week, the US Supreme Court temporarily halted future deportations of Venezuelans on those grounds, arguing that potential deportees should have the right to challenge their deportation in court, but the administration has stalled and obfuscated in the case of those already deported, risking being held in criminal contempt by the judge in that case. There have been accounts of law enforcement officers in plain clothes, wearing masks, detaining foreign students and immigrants without identifying themselves, and the Krome Detention Center in Miami is currently at three times its capacity, with detainees lacking adequate food and water, being forced to sleep on concrete floors, and required to use uncleaned bathrooms.
These and similar cases should certainly inspire Catholic law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and other government officials to ask whether, in good conscience, they can support, participate in, or cooperate with such activities. But who will guide them through the process of forming their consciences and discerning the appropriate response to their situation? I first raised the question of conscientious objection in an article asking how the Catholic Church in the US, and in particular the bishops, could respond if then President-Elect Trump acted on his promises to undertake mass deportations. I pointed to the US bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, and particularly its treatment of conscientious objection in relation to those involved in the manufacture and potential use of nuclear weapons, including soldiers, government officials, and those who work in the defense industry, as an example of what a concerted effort by the Church to encourage a society-wide examination of conscience might look like.
In this and subsequent articles, I want to explore this theme in more detail. In this article, I’ll outline the bishops’ conception of the Church as a “Community of Conscience.” In a second article, I’ll explain the pastoral letter’s teachings on nuclear weapons and how they appeal to those involved in the manufacture and potential use of nuclear weapons to consider some form of conscientious objection. And in a third article, I’ll offer some thoughts on how the Church might help those Catholics involved in immigration enforcement form their consciences and respond to the pangs of conscience they may experience.
The Challenge of Peace teaches that membership in the Church is primarily a matter of responding to the call to be disciples of Jesus. Drawing on Pope John Paul II’s 1979 encyclical Redemptor Hominis, the letter states that this call to follow Jesus gives the Christian faith a deeply personal aspect (#274). Christians must wrestle with the question of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a country armed with nuclear weapons and developing new forms of weaponry, according to the bishops, and their letter is intended to guide the community of disciples as they struggle with that question (#275).
The bishops repeatedly return to the issue of conscience throughout the pastoral letter. They note that one purpose of the Church’s teachings on war and peace is to guide the faithful in forming their consciences (#16). Following the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes, the bishops recognize that some Catholics’ consciences lead them to completely reject war, while others maintain that military service in pursuit of peace can be compatible with Christian discipleship (##73, 118). The bishops also call for what they describe as “selective conscientious objection,” meaning that soldiers or draftees could refuse to participate in a particular war, rather than war in general, based on their consciences (#233).
They suggest that questions of conscience regarding war and peace are particularly acute because, “It is clear today, perhaps more than in previous generations, that convinced Christians are a minority in nearly every country of the world …” (#276). Therefore, being a disciple of Jesus can be demanding:
To be disciples of Jesus requires that we continually go beyond where we now are. To obey the call of Jesus means separating ourselves from all attachments and affiliation that could prevent us from hearing and following our authentic vocation. (#276)
Under these circumstances, they claim, “[W]e can identify rather easily with the early Church as a company of witnesses engaged in a difficult mission,” and “[W]e must regard as normal even the path of persecution and the possibility of martyrdom” (#276).
It’s a bit jarring to read those words written at a time when the Catholic Church in the US had a great deal of public influence, as the impact of The Challenge of Peace itself attests. Still, many Catholics who have chosen the path of nonviolence, like the Berrigan brothers and participants in the Plowshares movement, have faced prison time and other legal ramifications as a result of their work, and Catholics in other nations have given their lives for peace, such as the many martyrs of the civil war in El Salvador, which was ongoing when The Challenge of Peace was written. And of course, even if the Catholic Church in the US is not persecuted today for its stance on war, it has gained the enmity of the state for its care for migrants.
Regardless, the bishops are surely right that living out the demands of a faithful Christian conscience today require a strong sense of vocation, a capacity for self-denial, and a willingness to “dispose oneself for a share in the cross” (#276). For example, a Catholic with a well-formed conscience working in immigration enforcement today may suffer stalled career ambitions or even need to change career paths entirely; in extreme situations, they may even face legal repercussions for refusing to participate in unethical activities.
As a Community of Conscience, it is the responsibility of the Church to educate the faithful about the Church’s moral teachings and how they apply in the contemporary context. In The Challenge of Peace, the bishops focus on the need for dioceses and parishes develop educational programs on the Church’s teachings on war and peace (#280), and there is a similar need today for programs on the Church’s teachings on migration and related topics like the dignity of persons. The letter emphasizes that the Church should focus on teaching more general principles, while providing guidance to the faithful on how those principles can be applied in concrete situations. Although the Church as a community can help people discern their path, it is a matter of individual conscience which path a person chooses among “possible legitimate options” (#283).
Importantly, the bishops further insist that the Christian path of discipleship requires “the conversion of the human spirit to God” (#284), a transformation they link with respect for the dignity of every person. They write, “When we accept violence in any form as commonplace, our sensitivities become dulled” (#285). In other words, it is hard to foster a culture in opposition to the horrors of war when the killing of innocent life through abortion is widely accepted, or in a nation where the death penalty is routinely practiced (##285-89). Today could we deny that lack of respect for the dignity of immigrants and refugees is linked to a more pervasive degrading of our sense of human dignity, expressed, for example, in economic exploitation and toleration of sexual violence? The Vatican’s recent document Dignitas Infinita provides us a comprehensive way of thinking about the dignity of the person and the different ways it is violated in today’s world.
Being a Community of Conscience also calls for prayer: “In prayer we are renewed in faith and confirmed in our hope in God’s promise” (#291). The Challenge of Peace is understandably focused on how prayer can help develop a sense of inner peace and serve as a source of peace in the world, but prayer is also an opportunity to encounter God and experience His love, and to discern the will of God. The pastoral letter especially encourages individuals, families, and parish communities to engage in forms of prayer like reflections on Scripture and the rosary as a way to foster the virtues needed to live as disciples (#293). It also points to the Mass as an essential way of fostering authentic Christian discipleship (#295).
Finally, the bishops acknowledge penance as a crucial aspect of the life of discipleship and the formation of consciences. They write:
Penance directs us toward our goal of putting on the attitudes of Jesus himself. Because we are all capable of violence, we are never totally conformed to Christ and are always in need of conversion. …. Thus, there is continual need for acts of penance and conversion. (#297)
Penance allows us to personally undertake the “conversion of the human spirit to God” required of disciples, to identify and remove our blind spots, and to wrestle with our weaknesses, but the bishops also suggest that a more communal form of penance is needed. For example, they lament the way that “The present nuclear arms race has distracted us from the words of the prophets, has turned us from peace-making, and has focused our attention on a nuclear buildup leading to annihilation” (#300). Today we might similarly be in need of penance for nurturing a fear of the foreigner, for exploiting immigrant labor, and remaining indifferent to the inhuman conditions in prisons and detention centers more generally.
Earlier this month, I wrote that one of the tasks of theologians today is “to expand our imaginations regarding the ways the Church can engage with the world as the sacramental presence of the Kingdom in the world,” which includes “recovering examples from the past and providing a theological rationale for creative forms of engagement in the present.” The Challenge of Peace’s account of how the Church can serve as a Community of Conscience is one relatively recent example from the Church’s Tradition that I believe can prove particularly helpful to US Catholics today as we grapple with how to respond to the mistreatment of immigrants and refugees. As I will discuss in a later article, this ought to include guidance on how Catholics involved in immigration enforcement in some way can navigate questions of conscience, but really all US Catholics ought to take on the demanding process of educating one another about the Church’s teachings on migrants and migration, developing a consistent respect for human dignity, engaging in prayer, and undertaking penance so that the Church can be an authentic witness of the Gospel to the world.
Of Interest…
Earlier this week, I wrote a little bit on Pope Francis’s legacy and pointed readers to an older article in which I discussed what I thought were the key aspects of his legacy. When I interviewed Jordan Denari Duffner for the Window Light podcast last year, she made a convincing case that Francis’s efforts to promote Christian-Muslim dialogue will also be remembered as an important part of that legacy, and I agree. Duffner recently appeared on Al Jazeera English to discuss Francis’s dialogue with Muslims, and although she has made the video clip available on social media, I haven’t been able to find a publicly available version of it, but I will keep trying.
Crux’s John Allen has started a series of article on “Papabile of the Day,” highlighting the cardinals Allen considers to be most likely to be elected Pope Francis’s successor. So far, he has written informative profiles on Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian bishops’ conference. Other profiles will follow in the days to come. As Allen himself admits, identifying papabile is a guessing game, but it’s still worthwhile for someone with Allen’s expertise to share what they consider the strengths and weaknesses of some of the cardinals who may be elected the next pope.
Coming Soon…
As I mentioned above, I plan to write two more articles continuing this series on how the Catholic Church in the US can be a Community of Conscience in response to the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and refugee resettlement. The second will look at how the bishops treated matters of conscience related to war, and in particular to the development and use of nuclear weapons, in The Challenge of Peace, and the third will explore how the Church can similarly address questions of conscience related to immigration enforcement today.
Some time next week, I’d also like to pen an article on what I think will be the main issues guiding the cardinals’ decision as they elect a new pope and who I consider to be the most likely papabile. I certainly don’t have the expertise of John Allen and other professional Vatican correspondents, but I still think it would be worthwhile to share my humble opinions.
I also think the period of the papal conclave or the first days of the new pontificate would be a good time to revisit an article I have intended to write for a long time, on last year’s Vatican document The Bishop of Rome, examining the role of the papacy in a synodal and ecumenical perspective. It’s a lengthy document, which is what has scared me away from writing about it, but we’ll see how it goes…
This is excellent, thank you. I’ve thought about the role of conscience, and community of conscience for a while, and would be interested if you could add reflections on the intra-ecclesial dimensions of objection of conscience. What should the people do when the Bishop, priest or a lay group is publicly known to be corrupt? I think the Rupnik case is an example, and many Catholics are divided. I’d be very interested in your views and perhaps historical examples.
Thank you for highlighting the importance of a community of conscience for the practice of faith. I look forward to your future writings and developments on this topic. Somehow I feel that Pope Francis’ openness to the gift of synodality is an essential element for the development of a community of conscience.